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Novels

Another season of hastily written words has ended and life seems incapable of continuing on as it always had before
The children were overjoyed by accomplishment, reveled in it
a well-deserved pride
I sat, as always, stubbornly refusing to show my pleasure.
Alone.
Victories, celebrations, terribly parties planned so I could show my cowardice, spending ever-more time with only myself.
Alone.
My own failed excuses kept me from fully embracing sleep, tormented me through to the morning when I had become so exhausted with myself that I collapsed in to a chair where I remained until noon, warmed by a blanket of cats who seemed indifferent to my plight.
When the words have been published, I’ll think of Skylar’s smile and know how it is to be a writer. And I’ll buy copies of her book for my friends, hoping she’ll notice.

Notes

Written 1 December 2012 &  22 April 2013 in Anchorage, Alaska.

Brian Fuchs, “Novels” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2020)

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I’ve decided to challenge myself by participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal is 50K words in 30 days. I’ve had several books on my mind, but have gone with the one I feel is the most developed of those. While it isn’t the fantastic story I want to work with my friend Daniel on, I think it will be great to finally get it out. I have to keep reminding myself that I can develop some of the story as I write and I can do fine-tuning when I edit. I have a lot of questions about the direction the novel will take and I look forward to seeing where these characters end up. I’m spending this week on my main characters, writing back stories and descriptions that will help me understand them as I go along. I personally find it helpful to name my characters first, but I often change that in the end. Naming them just allows me to start ‘talking to them’ and getting into who they are. If this goes well, I feel like I could be finally headed in the right direction.

I’ve also revisited an idea I’ve had for a long time of creating a book of short stories, poems, artwork, etc. I’d collect submissions from current of past booksellers, likely those I’ve worked with… or those people who exist on the periphery of the bookselling world. I just have to get through to those who find the idea dumb.

Lastly, while looking through my notes concerning the novel I’ll be working on in November I came across a poem I had written in 2008. It needed a little work, so I’ve polished it a bit. Enjoy!Continue Reading

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Seahorses

We struggle for life, gasp for water
and we die, wriggling and contorting into position.
Our dried carcasses serve as amusement.
Fifty years we’ve been on display,
dust gathering in our rigid and bony structures,
souvenirs for those whose lives were more exciting.
They pull us out to reminisce about their wild youth,
our magic now stripped by time,
and they talk to each other about us and how they miss us.

Some of them forget about us,
about how we thrived in the waters before being rescued,
collected as memorials.
They don’t know about the vibrant reefs like we do,
about the others who didn’t make it or we carried back
to other grey places where they too would be forgotten.
Many of us are labeled for easy identification,
classified and sorted so onlookers can gaze at our husks
in wonderment or disgust… or a bit of both.
Our tiny bodies have become too numerous,
too many have been broken or discarded,
but most of us will fade into the dark obscurity, lost.

The new fashion has been to provide a tank,
to adopt a bit of our habitat and collect several specimens,
lives lived with names and memorialized
as members of families, temporary and disposable.
We exist as novelty, and still a part of their youth,
a part of that colorful past they will talk about one day,
sharing the photos with their children and grandchildren.
They’ll talk about us, about how much they love us,
pulling us from the drawers and boxes to prove themselves,
they’ll show videos they took of the tanks filled with water,
convinced that they are showing great love for us.
But when they are no longer beings asked to show off
their specimens, their carefully curated collections,
they’ll put us away again and go back to their real lives.

We will keep wishing that our dried bodies would stop
finding their way into souvenir shops of those who
do not want to dip into the water and experience our lives.
We don’t want to live in tanks either, playthings of people
who do not understand that our beauty has not been for them,
that our magic was meant for ourselves.

The sun is coming up on the horizon,
Christopher Street is quieter than it used to be,
and I wonder if a generation is coming
who will realize the world that was fought for,
and I wonder if they will long for the days
when they were precious trinkets of other people’s youth.

Notes

Written 1 July 2009 in Anchorage, Alaska & 5 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Seahorses” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)Continue Reading

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Literary Debris

The deities are losing cellular cohesion, gasping desperately for breaths as they become liquid and evaporate.
The poets have been usurped by melancholy memoirists,
aching to have original lives.
Every story seems to be told, despite repetition
despite repetition
despite repetition,
despite…
repetition.
I keep sweeping up the dried remnants of fallen giants:
Thoreau, Dickinson, Whitman, O’Hara;
I even find Baum and Steinbeck and Spyri in the wreckage.
I collect the bits I can in a beautiful vessel where they remain safe, more pieces having been spared than expected.
Few search for the treasures, worried they’ll cut themselves on the old words of masters.
Picking through the pieces still brings me joy
even if I’ve no one to share them with;
I wish I could be as beautiful whole as they are in shards & residue.

Notes

Written 16 February 2009 in Anchorage, Alaska.

Brian Fuchs, “Literary Debris” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

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Mambo Italiano

for JoBeth

You bounced in wearing sweaters
with Christmas faces or purple things,
matchmaking for us like we belonged
to your own family, and we did.
We’d talk too long about
New Jersey, your husband,
H.R. Geiger’s suggestive images,
“where have you been all my life?”
you said, splitting my side,
sunshine spilling from the wound
lightening a dismal day.
Rosemary Clooney music played
overhead and we told the new hires
about your metal leg, pretended
to stick magnets to it.
We’d pepper your introduction
with tales of your uncle, John Gotti.
That took on a life of its own
after you left; it became true,
part of our mythology, our genesis. We felt your absence,
didn’t talk about cancer or dolls,
and we danced and drank with
Spider-man’s worn out ambassador,
your brother who couldn’t tell you
about his cancer, his fear.
He sat with you, dying with you
propping your up and shining
a spotlight on your face.
We could see on his face how much
he wished to carry your burden.
We’ve listened for your melodic voice,
laughed and smiled,
looked for an oversaturated rum cake,
but by then you were gone.

Notes

Written 22 August 2008 in Anchorage, Alaska & 8 September 2019 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Mambo Italiano” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)

This is how this poem appears in the book Okie Dokie. I’m considering rewriting it, or maybe I’ll just write something new to express these thoughts. We’ll see.

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Open your arms (and welcome Love)

A fervent plea to those people I’ve seen my Church family morphing into, slipping away from me, from Love. A prayer for the many who’ve seen the backs of their loved ones too often, shivering alone because they were misunderstood or openly judged for being human.

My neighbors turned towards themselves
and forgot my face.
Backs towards me with multitudes of assumptions.
My heart feels the hymns,
feels the joy still.
I’m unchanged.
My image fails me; refuses to take the shape of the mold
[the idyllic life]
the person I was supposed to be.
I’m neither broken nor lost.
I’m Love’s child, regardless of whispers and raised eyebrows.
My home,
our home.
I never felt so unwelcome from a family, silently, passively.
Judgments. Silence.
Silence.
From my perch high above the elders,
the deacons, the little old ladies
who wait for death on the third pew from the back,
my mind stretches, finding thoughts far from my body,
dreamily.
I welcome judgment.
Don’t pray for me in anger
or sorrow
or disappointment.
Don’t welcome be back from depravity.
Be family; be true to Love.
Love. Love.
Open your arms — not only to me,
not to selfish or petty concerns of mine,
open your arms because they should be open.
Because they are there for welcoming,
uncrossed and warm,
welcome the children, your family,
forgotten innocents,
the joyful, the content,
the exuberantly happy,
the depressed, and the angry.
Keep you arms open to those whose lives you don’t understand,
whose lives are full of light and laughter,
but cannot find comfort in rigid conformity.
I’ll join them too — march with them
into the auditoriums across distances,
across situational divides.
Be Love.
Kiss your neighbor on the forehead and have them over for dinner.
There is nothing important like Love.
There is nothing but Love.
There is Love.
Love.
And Love will take our hands — yours, mine,
the multitudes huddled in the rain.
We’ll find ourselves then.
We’ll free ourselves and be family again.
And selfish concerns and trivial differences will never be able to keep us apart.

8.21.2008Continue Reading

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Meeting with Tlāloc

Life’s all pauses and breaks;
my feet don’t seem so eager anymore to get to those places
I’ve always kept close to my heart and deep in my dreams.
There’s something soothing about stasis,
something unnerving as well.
I’m peering through cracks and holes of a life that is always shifting,
searching for someone who might be peering back at me
from the other side… of what?
The winds are picking up and I can feel change creeping over the horizon.
Storm’s comin’ and I’ve not gotten ready for it this time,
thought I’d enjoy more of this part of life,
thought there’d be more,
thought I could find comfort in being alone.
Blow me into bits; create something new and magical,
something more than I’ve ever been.
Grasping for hands to hold, I realize that there is only me.

22 July 2008

Written 22 July 2008 in Anchorage, Alaska.
Brian Fuchs, “Meeting with Tlāloc” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)
Notes
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